| playwright, novelist, and poet

Strolling Stories

Early in 2014 I was commissioned to write and direct a piece of outdoor community theatre for the project, Strolling Stories, which was to play a key part in that year’s Caldmore Village Festival Carnival Procession. Caldmore is a lively, vibrant, multi-cultural area of Walsall, and the aim of the project was to collect stories from its diverse cultures, which would be then used as the basis for the play. The play, The Journey Home, featured a talented and committed cast of community actors, and an equally talented and committed band of musicians, led by Aziz Ibrahim, who also composed the original music. After being performed in the delightful Caldmore Community Garden to a packed audience, the cast, musicians and a host of other brightly costumed characters took to the streets for a procession, carnival-style, through Caldmore to Palfrey Park, to join the festivities there, and perform their songs on the main stage.

There’s a video montage of the play and the procession, with one of Aziz Ibrahim’s compositions, here: